Unsafe at Any Speed

Film: Crash
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Going in to Crash, I knew only that it was controversial. The film itself is somewhat controversial, at least. What’s really controversial is that it beat Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture at the Oscars. Whenever something like that happens, there’s fallout, and so within a matter of moments Crash became filma non grata. Had Brokeback walked off with the coveted prize, this film would be remembered as a solid, well-made film about everyday, casual racism. Instead, it’s put in the same category as films like Around the World in 80 Days. It’s a poser, a film that’s not as good as the Academy thinks. Or, more damning, it’s an Oscar winner because it was the safe choice. It’s about a topic Hollywood loves, and it doesn’t involve any of that…y’know…gay stuff. The truth might actually be simpler—nothing with Tony Danza in it deserves to be Best Picture.

Crash is one of those films with a couple of dozen stories going on at the same time. It’s the sort of film that makes me wonder why I started doing summaries of what I watch in the course of these reviews. So, I’m not going to, because it would take me the length of this review plus another half just to get through all of the characters, all of the stories, and all of the ways these different stories meet up. Yes, it’s one of those movies, where each of the many stories takes a different twist and intersects (or, perhaps, “crashes into”) another one. Each character meets up with a few of the others at times, and we get everyone’s story, at least in part.

Dude Looks Like a Lady

Film: The Crying Game
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Every now and again, a film comes out that has a moment that transcends everything else about the movie. The Crying Game is very much that sort of a film. There’s a reveal about halfway through that defines it completely. Even if you haven’t seen the film, you more than likely know exactly what I’m talking about. I knew the big secret of The Crying Game within a month of its release. Silly, stupid me thought that the reveal was actually central to the plot of this film. It so totally isn’t. I mean, it’s certainly more than a simple plot point, but the movie hardly revolves around it.

Instead, we’re thrown immediately into a situation with a young black British soldier named Jody (Forest Whitaker) romancing a young Irish girl named Jude (Miranda Richardson). It’s evident that we’re in for a good old film cliché right off the bat. There are some white guys who seem to have a real issue with the black guy hanging on a white woman, and the pair gets followed when they leave. It’s a lousy trick, really. The easiest way to get the audience to dislike someone is to play to an old, failed prejudice like the one about interracial couples. It’s such an easy way to sway an audience. I was, I admit, a little put out.

Don't Mess with Texas

Film: Lone Star
Format: VHS from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on big ol’ television.

There were moments when I was watching Lone Star that I felt very much like I was watching the precursor to No Country for Old Men. These moments were fleeting. Really, the only points of commonality are that one of the main characters is a cop and that it takes place in Texas. It’s got one very significant issue that could be easily fixed, even now, years after the film was released, but we’ll get to that in a little bit.

Out in the middle of a former shooting range, a couple of men find a body. Well, what they really find is a skull of someone buried there years ago. Not too far away, they discover a very worn sheriff’s badge, which means that we’ve got an investigation that will be underway soon. We learn shortly after this discovery that current sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper), the son of former sheriff Buddy Deeds (played in flashbacks by Matthew McConaughey) once had a beef with the sheriff before him. This man was named Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson). He was a corrupt sheriff, and when he tried to bring Buddy in on his scams, Buddy refused. The two essentially swore eternal enmity. Shortly thereafter, Charlie Wade vanished. So, the mystery here isn’t the identity of the body in the old shooting range, but how that body got there and who put him there. Buddy Deeds had his gripes with the man, but so did almost everyone else in town.

This Year's Model

Film: Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
Format: DVD from NetFlix on big ol’ television.

The ninth edition of The Book releases on Monday, October 1 with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on the cover. Knowing that, it made sense to get the review in early.

I think I would have made a terrible spy, which makes it a good thing that I never attempted to go into that sort of service. For one thing, I’m far too trusting in general, and that’s not the best personality trait for a wannabee spy. Second, I don’t think I would hold up well under torture. I have a decent pain tolerance, but I’m not a fan of knives or needles and have a desperate fear of being bound or confined. I’d be way too easy to break. But I do enjoy espionage films because they’re all about clandestine meetings and surreptitious assassination attempts and all that sort of fun stuff. Y’know, gun battles and car chases and stuff.

And then there are films like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy that have a soupcon of action but focus far more on the cerebral side of the spy game. While there’s some action here, this is a film in which our protagonist and his nemesis sit around and talk a lot and think cinematically until the Gordian Knot of the film’s plot resolves itself. I don’t want to imply that this is a bad film or even a boring one, but I was expecting a lot more running/shooting/climbing/fighting and less teasing out of riddles.

Gangs of Taiwan

Film: Tong Nien Wang Shi (A Time to Live, a Time to Die)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

One problem I have with the more difficult to find films is that I tend to write a lot of these reviews while I am watching the film, sort of an on-the-fly reaction. I can’t do that with streaming internet video; the laptop is sort of busy when the film is playing, meaning I can’t take notes that turn into these reviews unless I do so by hand. Here’s a news flash—I don’t generally like writing by hand, which means I simply watch and wait, trying to formulate thoughts on the film without having a trustworthy method to capture those ideas.

For particularly memorable films, this is not a problem. For Tong Nien Wang Shi (A Time to Live, A Time to Die, listed as The Time to Live and The Time to Die in the Tome of Knowledge), a lot happens, but the camerawork is so unlike what I’m used to that the film seemed to simply wash over me. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t help my memory any. I hate to think I’m so much of a Philistine that I require explosions and/or monsters to jog my memory, but in this film, such things would have really been helpful.

Alas, there’s nary a burning oil refinery, mutated hell beast, or explosion of violence to help me along.

Cops and Robbers

Film: Bonnie and Clyde
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

For whatever reason, filmgoers have a fascination with people who commit crime. For years, I could guarantee that someone in every class I taught claimed Scarface as his (it was always a guy) favorite film. The Godfather and its sequel are legendary films in their own right—great films, but legend in no small part because of the subject matter. British crime films are fun and violent, and there are many worth seeing. Few films epitomize America’s love of their criminal heroes as Bonnie and Clyde.

Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) meet when it becomes evident that Clyde is trying to steal her mother’s car. There’s immediate sexual tension between them, in no small part because of Bonnie’s nudity at the time, and the two wander off together. Clyde admits to having been in prison, and proves his criminal past by showing her his gun and robbing a store. They drive off in a stolen car, and the crime spree is on.

Films I Didn't Want to Watch

Film: Funny Games; Audition
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen (Funny Games) and on laptop (Audition).

Watching films from a list presents a unique situation. In one sense, it’s liberating because the goal is to watch the films from the list. It reduces the need to make choices because the choices are made for me. On the other hand, there are times when I am forced into watching a film or two that I have no interest in seeing. Sometimes that works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Then there are the films that I object to seeing but must make my way through anyway. Such was the case with Michael Haneke’s Funny Games.

I’d be lying if I said this was a film I wanted to see. In fact, it’s a film I’ve been dreading since I first started this project. It’s also one I’ve started several times in the past, gotten a little way in, and then backed out and watched something different. In the case of this film, it’s very much a situation where the foreshadowing of pain was far worse than the pain itself. I fully expected this to be one of the most unpleasant film experiences I’d had in some time, and thus getting into the film, knowing what was coming was very difficult. Once the real horror starts, though, I realized that my expectations were far worse than the reality. This isn’t to suggest that the reality is a walk in the park. It isn’t. This is a grim and bleak film with an outlook as dark as anything I’ve encountered in the last three years.